In P. Vettiger et al., “The ‘Millipede’—More than one thousand tips for future AFM data storage,” IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 44, pp. 323-340, May 2000 an atomic force microscope (AFM)-based data storage concept is envisioned that shows ultrahigh density, terabit capacity, small form factor, and high data rate. Ultrahigh storage density can be achieved by applying a thermo-mechanical technique for storing and reading back data in very thin polymer films by means of a local probe. With this technique, 30-40 nm-sized bit indentations of similar pitch size can be made by a single tip of a cantilever in a thin (50 nm) polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) layer, resulting in a data storage density of 400-500 Gb/in2 (62.0-77.5 Gb/cm2). High data rates can be achieved by parallel operation of probes of a large two-dimensional (2D) AFM array that have been batch-fabricated by silicon surface-micromachining techniques. The very large scale integration (VLSI) of the micro/nanomechanical devices, e.g. cantilevers and tips, on a single chip leads to a 2D array of e.g. 32×32 (1024) AFM cantilevers with integrated write/read storage functionality. Time-multiplexed electronics control the write/read storage cycles for parallel operation of the Millipede array chip. Initial areal densities of 100-200 Gb/in2 (15,5-31,0 Gb/cm2) have been achieved with the 32×32 array chip. The data storage material can be polymers or other media, and not excluding magnetics.
Until now, no architecture of a local probe based storage is known which allows free scalability and a random addressing scheme.